By Grant Taylor-Hill
Copyright insider-gaming
Borderlands 4 dropped last week, and fans have been pouring hours into the fresh, open-world environment of Kairos, but the launch hasn’t been without issues. On PC, the game is struggling immensely for a vast portion of the community, and that has made Gearbox’s leadership, especially Randy Pitchford, the target of criticism.
On Steam, 35% of all reviews are negative, and while Gearbox is hard at work fixing up Borderlands 4 post-launch, disgruntled players are still taking to social media to harangue Pitchford and Co. Recently, the Gearbox CEO hit back against those criticizing how the game has been made.
‘Show Us How It’s Done, Please’
In a statement on social media that Randy Pitchford dubbed as sarcasm (however thinly veiled), the CEO wrote in response to a comment about ‘relying on AI upscale’:
Code your own engine and show us how it’s done, please. We will be your customer when you pull it off.
The people doing it now are clearly dumb and don’t know what they’re doing and all the support and recommendations and code and architecture from the world’s greatest hardware companies and tech companies working with the world’s greatest real time graphics engine coders don’t know what you seem to know. /sarcasm
This message came after a string of posts containing technical advice from Pitchford, aimed at placating the PC players experiencing widespread issues with Borderlands 4’s optimization. He recommended using the built-in Windows 10 graphics settings, turning off volumetric fog, and switching on DLSS, amongst other things.
His response to one user about using AI upscaling was lambasted by social netizens. One said, ‘Wow, really? That’s your reaction? Not a good look, bro,’ while another bagged on Gearbox in general: ‘It’s not our fault you can’t deliver a solid product.’
Another user jumped back to the price point of the game:
Don’t charge $70 if you cannot optimize the game. Crybaby.
The comments came thick and fast, targeting Pitchford personally: ‘You either need to learn PR basics or step down, Randy. You are a genuine embarrassment.’
During Gamescom 2025, I sat down with Randy Pitchford to learn all about Borderlands 4, and he assured me that the game would sell so well that it would push the series over 100 million total sales.
Do you think Pitchford is right to slap back against criticism, or should he behave more humbly? Let me know on the Insider Gaming forum.
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